contemporary interior design portfolio
hey, eric here with 30 by 40 design workshoptalking about instagram tactics this week. i've kind of changed my thinking about itand how i've been using it and it's becoming really important to my business and my workas an architect. so, if you're like me and you have an instagramaccount but you're unsure of how to use it professionally or why it's even important,i'll show you a few of the people that i'm following and what i'm learning as i try tobecome a better instagram practitioner myself. understanding the context of instagram isan important first step. it's a social platform and it's one wherethe engagement of your followers is gonna be a lot higher than almost any other placeonline.
people are looking to be entertained here,they're looking for a closer connection to their favorite creators or brands, and - especiallyhere - they expect high quality images. this context is a chance to give them somethingthey can't find from you anywhere else and with 800 million users worldwide i can guaranteeyour clients, your future employers, employees, and your business contacts, they're all heretoo. so, knowing the context, i think your firsttask is to separate your personal account from your professional one. when someone sees your grid and decides tofollow you they're doing so because you've shown a consistent aesthetic or set of imagesand so that's what they're going to be expecting
from you. you want to follow through on that promise;save the cat photos for your personal account. now, the business account also opens up allthese analytics tools too so you can measure the success of each one of your posts andthere's a few other important tools, but more on that in a minute. simple, clear, short descriptions are besthere: what you do, where you do it, and probably the most important thing is the link. now, you only get one clickable link on allof instagram and that's here in your bio, but rather than link up the home page of yourwebsite, use it to strategically send traffic
somewhere. i use it to link out to my latest video butyou might use it for a product launch, or links to the tools that you use, a landingpage; a kickstarter. i read an article on archdaily recently toutingnorman foster as a must follow on instagram. now, i don't know about you, but i have ahard time relating to this kind of lifestyle; here we are on some kind of a super yacht,here's his rolls royce or bentley or i don't know what this is. but, for him and the kind of clients he'sseeking, it probably makes a lot of sense, it's probably a smart strategy.
your grid is your portfolio and it says alot about your brand. what do you want it to say for you? is it purely lead gen? is it for brand awareness? does it offer a behind-the-scenes look atyour process, or is it only photos of the finished product? is it abstract? minimal? artistic?
does it show the people behind the product? when you decide what that is, ruthlessly curateyour posts for a consistent message and edit your images before posting them. simple subjects and high contrast are thingsthat i've found to work pretty well. well, the more i practice the more i've cometo realize that almost everything we do is linked to story. learning to tell a good story is a skill wecould all use practice with. instagram makes it easy to experiment withvideo using their stories feature; these are short video clips which always show at thetop of the feed when you open the app.
if all your highly-polished content - let'ssay - lives in your feed, you might use stories to color that, to give a behind-the-sceneslook at your process, the sort of messy side of design. now, although it's easy to post just aboutanything to your story, a trend that i've been noticing is that people are actuallyputting a lot more effort into their stories. instead of dropping clips haphazardly ontotheir story, they're editing more cinematic sequences. you might check out jesse driftwood to seewhat he's doing in this regard. now, i managed to ignore this feature fora long time in part because your story used
to expire after 24 hours but that's changed. now, your stories can be archived to a highlightedsection in your bio which makes them actually worth investing some time in i think. i'm also a fan of nick schiffer’s stories- he's the co-host of the modern craftsman podcast and although his stories aren't cinematicnecessarily, i like them because he digs into the details of his projects and he openlyshares the specifications for the materials and all the products he's using. matt risinger is another design-focused, craft-consciouscontractor who's smartly using instagram and youtube.
he's often using it to engage and solicitother expert opinions from his followers. you're able to access the intimate detailsof his projects, including the points where he's stuck or left guessing what the rightthing to do is. this is material you'd never be exposed tootherwise and i love that about his feed. also worth noting here is that with a businessaccount - which offers a whole slew of benefits - and more than 10,000 followers you can unlockthe swipe up feature on stories. this allows you to link out to any locationonline you'd like and it's in addition to the link that's in your bio. think about that for a minute; that's amazinglypowerful.
the people and brands i seek out and mostenjoy following have between a couple thousand and let's say a hundred thousand followersand they often pull back the curtain on their process. their feed offers me something i can't getanywhere else and best of all i get to see their experiments. they're trying to figure out what works justlike i am. so, their tactics are a little more creativeand they're not so rule-bound as a feed like archdaily’s let's say. the things you have to do to get to a hundredthousand followers are much different than
the things you have to do once you have ahundred thousand followers, which makes emulating their tactics more likely to be successfulfor smaller creators like me. now, i'm not going to get into the taggingstrategies here but you'll see all the instagramers i've highlighted here, they use them. watch what they're doing, follow along, experimentand learn. i love this comment from archdaily on a recentpost they put up about instagram. i love it because it's just more white spacefor the rest of us. the reality here is: instagram is a businessopportunity. check out zean macfarland, not only for hisfantastic feed, which is populated with his
renderings - they're kind of done in thismonument valley kind of style - but also because he's using instagram to sell products. he's written six e-books and they're all kindof geared toward architecture students. a couple of these are actually tutorials whichteach the techniques he uses to create his unique, sketchy style renderings, the onesyou see in his instagram feed. if you check out his website, he also sellsprints of everything on his feed. so, he's found a really clever way of turninghis instagram feed into a revenue generating business. now, one of the really interesting evolutionsof social media is that growing a following
teaches you all these meta skills and i'mreally big on meta skills - the skills you build that confer broad advantages to everyaspect of your life. meta skills are things like: writing, photography,editing; storytelling. these are all present on instagram and postingregularly forces you engage in all of them frequently. you start to learn what works and what doesn't,you learn to market to an audience, you learn to build engagement, and empathy, and youcraft a voice for your brand, whether that's personal or professional. and, what's even more interesting is thatyour social media following…it has a real
monetary value now. your following is an asset you can actuallyleverage, whether that's for professional reasons, for your own personal financial gain,or to influence change in the world. when you're looking for new work, or lookingfor a new job, or marketing your business, your social media following, it becomes partof the negotiation, part of the value you can bring and i think that's an asset worthinvesting in. now, if you want to follow along with whati'm doing on instagram you can find me at 30by40 and please do share yours in the comments. smash that like button below if i've helpedyou in any way, keep making things out there,
and i'll see you again next time. cheers, my friends!